Baby formula

Baby, or infant, formula is a manufactured food for babies often used as a substitute for breast milk. It is a powder or liquid concentrate that is mixed with water and fed through a bottle. It is widely used in Asia, which represents 53% of the global market share. In Hong Kong, a shortage in availability of baby formula led to restrictions on how much could be taken out of the city and into mainland China.

The Dutch government yesterday ordered an investigation into persistent shortages of certain brands of baby formula, blamed on networks of traffickers who ship milk powder to China where it is sold at premium prices.

Retailers started pulling a brand of imported baby formula off shelves yesterday after a media report revealed that the Chinese distributor had repackaged the product in China and mixed it with expired milk powder.

When it comes to the emotive breast-versus-bottle debate, most developed countries follow the World Health Organisation and Unicef's International Code on Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes, drawn up in 1981.

The best way to understand the real lesson of the baby formula controversy is to go back to its origins, which explains why Hong Kong has to cling as tenaciously as possible to the "two systems" part of the "one country, two systems" arrangement.

The baby formula saga rolls on, and as a public health researcher I have been waiting to see media coverage of someone from the Department of Health or the Food and Health Bureau pointing out three important facts.

Hong Kong is a free port. Any interference in the market that risks that reputation is not to be undertaken lightly. But the government can count on public support for intervention to stem the re-export of imported infant milk formula to the mainland by parallel traders, which has seriously depleted local supplies and contributed to growing resentment of mainland tourists and shoppers.

If every crisis presents an opportunity, then we should look on the continuing furore over the shortage of baby formula as a transformative moment. Forget about our official pie-in-the-sky schemes to turn the city into an arts hub or logistics centre, and this and that hub. Let's declare what we have already become: a baby formula hub.